carrion fair

Primula cold brewer

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 21:59:00 +0000

The cold brewer is easy to use (provided you don't use the measurements in the instruction booklet). 3oz of grind & 40oz of water for 12~24 hours and that will last you up to 2 weeks if properly contained.

The cold brew is sweeter than traditional coffee brewing methods. The natural oils are retained and does not leave you with that bitter taste. I actually prefer the bitter flavor notes, but the cold brewer is an easy condensed coffee method. For highest quality my pour-over is probably the most satisfying, but produces less than your average mug. A good in-between would be the French press used in conjunction with the coffee cube tray.

Moon tower bike friendly restaurant/pub

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Sun, 22 Feb 2015 20:04:00 +0000

Bike packing monster cross 1x10

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Sun, 22 Feb 2015 07:01:00 +0000

On-one scandal 1x10

Decayed K. Meson: the weary hands of a man

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:49:00 +0000

"if you want to change who you are, first you have to change what you do," ~jude law.

when i was around twenty i wondered aloud to my friends, "when will i have man hands; father hands?" they looked at me without an answer. i'm 31 now. lately, i've been turning a wrench for a wage and for hobby. i ride my bike less, but i make sure that other people can ride their's. things must change in this life if we want to keep living. most days i clock out with a heavy layer of oil & grease beneath my finger nails & embedded in the deep crevices of my hands. i still write almost every day and i'm diligent about working on new songs to share my heart and my love of this planet and you people. i miss the city of the blues; my home. i miss the place where my son resides and the comfort and proximity to great friends. if you're one of the ones reading this, i probably miss you.

i've reenrolled in school and its hard. its not so much as the difficulty of the courses, rather the erratic schedule that it demands alongside a 40 hour+ job. i feel (and i hope) that i'm becoming the person that i once thought i would be, albeit a few years late. i'm slowly beginning to make new friends and make this place a home, at least until i finish school, which, according to what they tell me will be some time in 2016.

every nick on the knuckle and every turn of the wrench i feel a little closer to reaching my goal and returning to my family & home in chicago. some nights i feel like i've drank a little too much and take a few steps back, but i know that i will get there some day. i read the facebook posts and i see you getting to your places now and its an inspiration to me. each day i take account for my actions and i find resolve in the days that i push myself and move a little closer to my goal. a smile is found across my face when i see you in bali, and africa, and thailand, and in love. and i'm in love too.

there are days when i step outside the shop and i'm down down, and i think to myself, "i want to think of something nice," and so i think of you, and the things that i could make to show you how much i appreciate you, and i daydream and stare at the hot cars in the thick, sunny traffic, but its time to get back to work, so i must forget being depressed or my daydreaming for at least a little while. the wrench keeps me straight and focuses my heart, giving me purpose (and a little cash in my hand).

i see my hands now, and they are changed... or at least changing. "work keeps away the 3 evils: boredom, vice & want," said Voltaire, "so let us work without theorizing, and then we may find happiness.

something delicate

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 18:51:00 +0000

with these shaking hands, i search, in the dark, fumbling, for something. if i'm not careful, i may tip a finger against it's porcelain edge sending it careening to a million pieces against the hard wood of the floor, so i tip toe on creaking boards careful not to disturb the tables around me. walking on crystal plies in the fluttering shadows of moonlight swaying from the arboreal breeze shaking through the window panes and dancing on the long, gold, wooden slats.

the air is still as i move through the dark towards something, i know not what. the room opens up before me as my eyes strive to adjust. the light creeping in is starving and frail. it slowly crawls along the old boards reaching it's pale white fingers to the corners of the room, not quite reaching. i can see, barely, light plumes of dust in her arms as she reaches through the room. it floats and moves from the stir i have caused in the late hour, tip-toeing to that delicate thing i yearn for.

i can smell the cold wood at my bare feet, reminding me that there are still plenty of things to be knocked over and broken, and so i am reminded to be more careful. after several steps the light momentarily disappears altogether and i have forgotten my place in the room. how far have i come? how much farther do i have to go to reach what i was looking for? what was it i was looking for again? oh, that's right: something delicate. something quiet and gentle. something to remind me what it is like to forget about the cold stale air, if at least, only for a little while.

black out

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:57:00 +0000

friends & family

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 03:54:00 +0000

this is my first blog post on here for quite some time. i've been dealing with a lot and haven't felt the urge to write much lately. i've been going through some hard times. i would have posted this on facebook but the character length barked at me and wanted me to create a "note." noone reads notes. so...

Woke up this morning to an emotional email that made me cry. Thanks to my friends and family the guardian ad litem recommended I be awarded the visitation I've been fighting for for the past year. She also made it known to the court that the ex appears to be purposely making things more difficult than necessary, nit-picking and making unreasonable demands. It looks like the end of the battle is in view! Thanks to everyone who spoke on my behalf as a father. I was informed of some of the particularly heart-warming and kind words you, my friends and family, had to say, though she didnt exactly specify who, i still appreciate it with the utmost regard.

TL;DR my friends and family are fucking awesome! Thank you all so much!

steampowered: the shitty black box of customer support

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 05:15:00 +0000

ever have a problem with a game within the steam world? specifically, team fortress 2. for a while i was playing trouble-free... until recently. i started experiencing subtle freezing issues.

virus!? update and run virus scans.... nothing.

check steam faq: no help.

checked forums. tried the quick cfg file hacks/adjustments only to find it didn't fix it. "maybe i didn't save it properly i thought." went back into the file reedited the code. saved. closed. reopened. fine. started the game. same glitch. disconnect. quit game. check file. the file has readjusted itself to the original configuration.

after checking several threads, reading many people have had similar issues with freezing and checking overheating or cpu overclocking, i threw a cpu/ram clock widget on my desktop: not maxing out in gameplay. wtf?

uninstall tf2. reinstall. game works okay!

next day i have a problem connecting to the internet. cannot repair connection. command.com ipconfig /release, /renew doesn't work. i go into the network settings and force a new ip address. no luck. i go in windows accessories and do a full system restore to a week prior. internet fixed; game starts stuttering again. WTFU@$)%)*)@#@#!_!+~~~!!!

uninstall. reinstall. start game. join server. freezing worse than before!

virus check. nothing. disk clean/defrag. nothing. check steam: no easy contact@support.email whatever... just faq's that don't help. I WANT TO TALK TO A FUCKING HUMAN!

if you provide a service and charge for service then you have a duty to actually give service! now, i realize that steam doesn't want every pissed off 15y.o. emailing them about some alleged hacker cheating in a game, but there should at least be some way to contact a human to figure out what's going on if there aren't any resources beyond the faq.

if i go to best buy and the game i buy doesn't work, you better damn well believe that i'm going to take it back to best buy to find out why. my system works and has worked fine for several valv^E games in the past (including tf2!) so why, suddenly is the game not working properly? i have read about poor updates rolling out too quickly from valv^E... if that's true why aren't other people having the same reaction on servers and why aren't they responding in chorus to questions over servers as to whether they're experiencing similar game behaviour?

I think you're going to have to back up this claim of speaking Arabic.. (my cousin to me on FB)

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 06:27:00 +0000

atakalam arabique ashway. that is not how it's actually written though. it's right to left and of course it has different characters.
وأنا أتكلم قليلا العربية
so that should be right-justified.
ا <- this character is similar to "A" but used as an article for almost all nouns. it is called alif. there are 3 letter structures for each letter. 28 letters in total (mostly consonants with a few gutteral vowel sounds {about 6}) the pronunciation of words is phonetic, meaning a g in arabic is not exactly like a g in english. here is a good reference to the arabic alphabet: http://www.alphabetglobal.com/img/arabic_alphabet.gif as you can see, "g" is about 2/3 down and is actually a "ghain" pronunciation. so a name like gene is only spelled as "nyj" read backwards as جينة ج ي ن ة <- here are the same letters separated into 4 characters. translate.google.com thinks that the WORD gene as a noun has a sound at the end. this would be like pronouncing either the english word or my name with an "ah" sound at the end, hence the ة character. the actual spelling of my name (or probably the word) would only be 3 letters (i think- i'm not fluent) would be the "j" sound a "y" sound pronounced EEE and an "n" (Jeen - essentially - phonetic) so it SHOULD look like this: جين so looking at the characters from right to left at both spellings, notice the difference: 4 letters: (with "ah" at end) جينة 3 letters: (no "ah") جين notice how the beginning (again, right to left) is the same this is our j -> ج looks diff. alone.
our y -> ي (two dots underneath. notice the two dots in the second character from the right. just a line with two dots.)
our n -> ن looks just about the same as a connected "n" because it's a final consonant in a word. look at the same "n" in the GENE with 4 letters... a line with a single dot above it. notice the change? this is where referring to the arabic alphabet link helps differentiate.

so as i don't speak very well, as my first statement concludes (atakalam arabique ashway - i speak a little), i have a basic understanding of the language which is cool when you meet arabic speaking people in the u.s. and they want to know how you know "kayfa halak?" (how are you)

(side note: kayfa haalik for girls, kayfa haalkum for a group)
4 minutes ago · Like
Gene Stovicek وأنا أتكلم قليلا العربية <--- this is a bit weird. or at least confusing to me... i could separate the words to figure out what the extra word is (at the beginning), but i can point out the atakalam... see if you can see the alif and the k sound (i'll give you a hint the k kinda looks like a k in the middle of a sentence) phonetically the only letters available in atakalam <- pronunciation, not spelling is "a" "t" "k" "L" "m" (all consonants with insinuated vowels (that's what the dots in words are for. it's actually an extrememly beautiful language if you look at arabic calligraphy)

Raw Video: Man Shot in Egypt Protest

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 05:19:00 +0000

recording laws

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 04:10:00 +0000

one of the few things i recall from my journalism class refers to knowledge, consent & legality of recording a situation whether it be audio or visual. an example was of an officer posing as a "john" trying to get a prostitute to solicit him [illegal] sex for money. as long as one party knows the conversation is being recorded (i.e. the posing officer): it's legal. furthermore an undercover officer does not have to inform of such. beware illinois: laws may be pending... (thanks reddit ;-)

this site details some of the finer points of recording law. being that i took my journalism class in ohio, that explains the points of fact my professor established, but did not expound upon on a state to state basis.

this is the onset of censorship. again, thank you, reddit. this is akin to the obscenity trials of ginsberg & joyce; just a couple of these 10 authors.

a law that says crooked cops are above the law and are not subject to being recorded as such would keep cops (much like the officers in the infamous rodney king beating) safe from the laws they're hired to uphold. cops should not be held to a different standard, immune to the law, but rather (if anything), they ought to be held to a higher standard. their actions should be subject to every bit of the law they are supposed to enforce.

wikileaks > censorship > anonymous (4chan) > ddos attacks
tunisia > censorship > anonymous > ddos attacks
no ddos attacks > governments > stop censoring!?

But i DON'T WANT a bath!

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 03:28:00 +0000

the internet is leaking

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 21:14:00 +0000

i found facebook big atom, 3 small atoms on my body wash.

i'm still awake (insomnia)

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 07:05:00 +0000

in the bathroom on the wall in the coffee shop amongst the bevy of graphiti just above the checkered floor is a trite poem that reads, “here I sit, broken hearted, came to shit and only farted...”

such is the essence of my insomnia. Here I sit, broken hearted, came to sleep and...
can't. stop. thinking. Each night I crawl into bed hoping to fall asleep shortly thereafter. Half of an hour passes. Then another. Two movies play. I nod off to sleep. Half of an hour later I'm awake again. There isn't enough whiskey or beer to solve my dilemma. I know that if I go to sleep, be it half in the bag or 2 full sheets, I will certainly arise an hour or two later feeling compelled to brush my teeth, drink several glasses of water (and maybe another beer) only to find that I am now more awake than before I started self-medicating. Is it in my head? Am I lying here awake because I can't sleep or because my mind knows that I haven't slept at this time for weeks and is playing out it's cruel trick on my body night after night? A paradox.

Maybe one full day without sleep is the cure I need? Stay awake all night long until the inevitable crash. Consume as much caffeine as possible and hold out 'til ten p.m. I'll be sure to sleep then. Maybe then I can get back to a more ordinary schedule. I will rejoice in waking up to the sun rather than kissing it goodnight.

My eyes close and the movie begins. The boy, the girl, the job, how it all played out, how it could have played out, how it can still play out, how it will end up playing out. I am William Bonny; foolish, brazen and gun slinging, riddled with ~~bullets~~... anxiety. My eyes blink and I can feel the dust burn my stubborn eyes as tumble weeds blow through deserted and stale wooden nights. If I smoked, I could busy my hands. But I don't.

Is the playlist too loud? Is the film keeping me awake or is it slowly shoving me off to the dream land that I long for? If I lay here long enough is that considered rest or must I drift off into unconsciousness and will I become unconscious if I lay here long enough or just keep restlessly tossing? It's 1:30. Four and a half more hours until, surely, i'll pass out. Surely.

Resort film files by actor, taking care to remove superfluous files and folders within subfolders. Prioritize films based on main characters rather than the initial acquisition of the film due to it's starring of a particularly sought after character for the greater project of studying actor's entire filmographies. Bongwater doesn't go in the jack black folder because luke wilson was the main protagonist. Luke wilson is now going to need his own folder. Zach galifianakis doens't get his own folder because due date was technically based on robert downey jr.'s character. Was the sixth sense centered on bruce willis' death or that little girl's life? (haley joe osmand?) Default to filing under bruce willis ostensibly until further clarification. Christian Slater only has one film under his name. Should I find more christian slater films or acquire more tarantino films and retitle the heading. I only have 2 labels with directors names. Only one film in each of them. Does one film entitle an entire folder? What's the point of downloading films i've already seen enough to qualitatively review them, just to store them under a director's name? The Fantastic Mr. Fox certainly shouldn't be filed under George Clooney (that guy from oceans 11), nor Jason Schwartzman. It belongs listed under Wes Anderson.

Is it okay to eat something at 2 am? Should I bake myself a casserole or sate myself with a few slices of cheese? maybe i'll just have those leftover slices of pizza and try to fall asleep to 3 more movies.

A classic GOOD movie

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 06:57:00 +0000

There are few times these days that you can walk into a theatre (or bring home a dvd if that's your thing) and walk out without having witnessed a film where a computer was one of the key actors. Few films that aren't driven strictly on special effects and media hype.

True grit is one of those films. Of course it doesn't hurt that jeff bridges (who has 2 releases this weekend) is the costar of this 1982 classic remake.

It is rare that we are able to watch a film and come away from it knowing that yes, that's probably the way it would have went down. She definitely would have lost her arm and when she went to see him it would have been, just barely, too late.

This film reminded me of a phrase from another jeff bridges film (crazy heart) when he asks maggie gyllenhall, “you know that song?” and she replies with, “[yes, but i] can't remember who did it.”

“that's the way it is with good ones. Always sure you heard 'em before” he later goes on to say that colin ferrel can't screw it up because “it's that good.” great movies are the same way. Even if you had ed wood remake it, the essence of it would still be there enough to make it a badass movie anyone (we hope.)

reorganization of priorities

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 23:24:00 +0000

all too often we find ourselves consumed by petty concerns. perhaps the concerns aren't petty in in the grand scheme of our trivial, individual lives, but overall as a planet, our personal problems should be the least concerns at hand, and we are too easily sucked into the immediate drama of our own existence & circumstance.

i sometimes forget about Darfur. i chide people when they rush to donate money to the latest natural horror regardless of the long-running evils like darfur (not to mention the wars we're involved in in the middle east). the sudanese haven't forgotten though. between tidal waves and earthquakes people see atrocity and jump to help victims of the tsunami that hit indonesia, sri lanka, india & thailand back in 2004, more recently the 7.0 earthquake that shook haiti to rubble this last year. short-lived disasters as these are easily solved and people are so quick to rush to give blood and donate a dollar to people temporarily disturbed by natural forces. unfortunately, things like the genocide in darfur are not as easily solvable. mostly because it's people doing bad things to other people. situations that we can't control like hurricanes and tornadoes are easier to swallow because it was an "act of god." it's harder to face something that forces us to look inward and realize that we could just as well have been on either end of that sword (what if you were born a black christian in sudan or a slightly lighter black muslim born in the same country instead of white middle class suburbanite in illinois?) we have no control over where we came out in the worlds and so it's easier to forget than to face. it's so hard to fix and it's been going on for so long. since 2003! it's... old news. in fact it's not really news at all. when's the last time your t.v. was on that you heard about the 400,000+ that have been murdered in north east africa? it doesn't mean we should stop trying to fix the situation.

today i was listening to twit's podcast and it referenced winning a 2012 ford focus. i thought, "hey, great i could use a car." it then went on to mention also creating a video to explain a charity you'd like to donate $10,000 USD. even better. win a car AND help someone in need!? fantastic. darfur came to mind. i haven't read up on the goings on of darfur for over 2 years, since i hosted an alleycat to help send proceeds to in-need refugees in celebration of earth day.

watching these videos again made me realize that i could be worrying less about my situation and doing more to help someone else. other than the first step to try to get ford motor co. give their 10,000 extra bucks to the people who could use it over in sudan, i'm going to try and continue working on events and projects that will help people in darfur. this blog entry is me urging you to send me your comments and suggestions as to how you might like to help or just offer a helpful suggestion to better some other people's lives.

when the chips are down & the cold rolls in

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 21:43:00 +0000

almost a hundred years ago now our country was a point that men hopped on & off trains in search for work and a better life. today it seems unemployment is once again at a crucial level. perhaps not as bad or as [world] wide spread as the great depression, but difficult nonetheless. it seems a bachelor's degree is the bare minimum for the most basic of jobs. when everyone is looking for work, why bother taking someone with an associates or less when the potential to hire a "bachelor" at half the cost is an available option.

i can't possibly know what it was to live back then, but it seems that society expects more from us today. or at least i feel that a lot is expected of me; and rightly so, but long gone are the days of industrialism: working in a screw factory or a car manufactoring plant. true, those jobs are still available somewhere, but generally you'd need electrician certification, CNC, welding or some applicable qualification unlike the days of old, when on-the-job-training was more common that not.

each morning the line outside the foodstamp office down the street from my house travels down the block and around the corner. the old yellow building draws funds from the government and allocates designated amounts for thousands of chicagoans each month.

gone are the days of hopping on a train and hoping to turn it all around. during those time a century ago, in Cleveland, there is a little known serial killer known as the torso murdere. [s]he was never caught, but was known however to choose his victims at the train tressels where you might hop on our off an old box car, burying them shallowly, beneath the rocks surrounding the tracks.

now it seems that hopping on a train might end up in a financial and reputational death. it's unlikely that a person would be able to recover from abandoning a city and heading out west or down south for work. theoretically possible, realistically unlikely.

employment is down... murder is up...

it's officially winter now. the red eye chicago murder statistics are out and it appears that gang conflict is officially only bad ass in the summer. it's too cold in february to go out and get gangsta. my neighborhood of humboldt park has stolen the title of most murders since red eye's last 187 assessment. it appears that the near sibling of wicker park, bucktown & logan square is more dangerous than the south side this time, topping out at 60 in August.

about a week ago i spoke with my roommate about a website, everyblock, concerning events in the neighborhood. it details the goings-on of a specified radius around the address entered: bike rack installations, park installations, shopping deals and amongst other things... crime. later that day, not having logged on to the website for some time, i decided to take a look. i found that earlier that morning at the north end of humboldt park, bordering logan square, a woman was found in an alley, strangled, and still unidentified.

on the upside, i'm looking forward to the cold keeping people indoors and not having to hear them complain about not picking up my dog's shit. in a neighborhood like mine, i think there are bigger fish to fry. i know what you're thinking: only an asshole doesn't pick up after his dog. i generally makes sure he does his duty in grass where it can break down and fuel the soil, rather than sit in a bag covered in lime in a landfill. to the people complaining about dog shit: why don't you complain about to guy who blatantly throws cigarettes and henessey bottles into the street? why don't you complain about the asshole that cleaned out his car by raking 20 mountain dew bottles on to the tree-lawn & sidewalk? that shit doesn't biodegrade... ever. at least i can kick snow or dirt over my dog's mountain of "dew"

The Letting Go: understanding, giving up & the question to the meaning of existence

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 22:09:00 +0000

recently i wrote an article on stoicism. it's a hard-earned characteristic to acquire if you haven't been raised to think and act that way. yes, perhaps over time, one may reach a sort of stoicism throughout the course of a lifetime by having been burned enough times and in turn become jaded and, in a sense, stoic (if not down right antisocial and/or sociopathic).

there's an aa phrase that quotes as such: god, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; And wisdom to know the difference.

there are times in our lives when giving up is the only option we have left. if we love something enough, let it go. if it comes back, then it was meant to be; an old proverb concerning love and acceptance. i prefer the one in grosse pointe blank: Debi: If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it's, well, broken.

it's hard to know what we're truly looking for in life and infinitely more difficult to know what other people want. there is no real way to know what another person perceives as truth; only a subjectively general idea of what truth might be. i'm not talking about truth vs. falsehoods (i.e. lying). the meaning of truth for my purposes here are more simply defined as real or unreal. take, for example, the instance of the chair: i know what a chair looks like and you know what a chair looks like, but neither of us could ever have the same perception of "a chair" due to the different manner we cognitively reach the fundamental aspects of what a chair is. we both have an archetypical view of what a chair should look like, but when i grew up there were a different set of chairs around my house than the chairs around your house (and if we grew up in regions so far distant in societal and financial or impoverished settings from one another, one of us may have no conceptual form of a chair established whatsoever.

for arguments sake, let's say our upbringings are not "too distant" in nature. two sentient beings therefore, separately, will epistemologically reach a general consensus of what a chair should appear as: it has a platform at a level on which one is capable of sitting, held with some sort of legs and perhaps a back to lean against and maybe arms, varying in color and design from there. ~CF: april, 2009

so from this point we must infer that there is a time to understand and a time to give up trying to understand. human beings are so infinitely complex that there is no way we can possibly understand the underlying "workings" of each other at a fundamental level. this is why we have friends and (hopefully not too many) enemies. being that this article is a slew of quotes, here is yet another. this particular one by Voltaire: Let us work without theorizing, 'Tis the only way to make life endurable. again, this leads us into the concept of stoicism. let us not get worked up over the why and concentrate moreso on the do.

stoicism isn't a perfect reaction to our world at hand, but as in government, perhaps it's the best means we have to an end. even when enlightened with the meaninglessness of existence we are still constantly sucked back into the drama of human existance. (see i heart huckabees)

the question ultimately is this; when do we give up (trying to understand)? the answer is simple: we don't. we continue on until the universe comes to collect us back into the infinite in an encompassment of quarks, leptons & gluons. and that is pure being. that is work without theorizing. that is accepting what we cannot change. the wisdom to know the difference however, is another story entirely.

from boxxy to boxee: a world of unnecessary; technology & news

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 02:36:00 +0000

as our society surges into a more and more technical state and smart phones are the status quo, we find ourselves asking the important questions (or so we hope): do i need this?

boxee is a device created to access movies and television shows on your personal television via internet connection with the comfortable aid of a remote and the lack of the awkward keyboard/small screen setup. is watching hulu on your laptop that bad? do you really need that much television in your life? maybe you just don't want to buy cable and it's more convenient to access television shows and netflix movies via your internet connection, but whats the point of accessing youtube on your television if you're going to watch the ever-superfluous boxxy on your boxee? yes, i know... confusing.

the point of technology begs us to ask ourselves if it's really an aid or a hindrance, if not a straight-up waste of time. apps for everything on our phones. apps to teach us how to tip. apps to tell us how many minutes until our bus or train arrives. apps to download books. how about an actual book?? don't get me wrong. i'm a a sucker for a well plotted zoetrope, but when i'm not in the theatre and instead perhaps in a coffee shop downloading a film, i pick up a real live book. you know... one of those things with a picture & title on the front and nothing but words 'til the back? like a dvd, but better.

microsoft has released it's competition to google's phone; windows phone 7: "a phone to save us from our phones... and get us back to life? really?? how is another phone actually going to get us back to life and away from the waste of time that our tech trends are taking us?

the other day when i was bartending a guy asked me if i knew about four square and i replied that i was the mayor of the place. "well i guess that answers my question," he jested before following with, "no, what i mean is, don't you think that it's a waste of time. logging in to a place rather than actually spending time living?"

good point. i replied, not in defense, but in logic, that i could just as easily be caught wasting my time reading the redeye or "puzzling" (cough, ahem, hah) out it's crossword in record time, but if you find me screwing off on twitter or checking into a venue, what's the difference, really? it's actually arguably more beneficial to surf twitter for news & gossip or check into a foursquare venue to earn the title of mayor and perhaps the bonus of earning something from the venue for the hard-earned title. hell, some places even offer discounts just for checking in; a small bonus for staying connected and having a smart phone.

What to expect when unexpecting...

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 21:12:00 +0000

when you're dating or at the very least and to be quite frank (& abase), fucking someone, there is a possibility of one (or “both”) of you becoming pregnant. There are a multitude of outcomes for this scenario to play out. We won't go over abortion, because it's irrelevant for this extent to the subject: bias. Sexism, Heterosexism, Racism (perhaps?), Classism, etc. As it plays out, you, as a couple, continue to go through the pregnancy together or apart but one or both of you will probably be completely terrified (maybe) and pick up one, if not several books on pregnancy and/or child-rearing.

The problem I have with these books is that they automatically assume that you're the “average” heterosexual, happily, married couple. 50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce, according to Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri. [there is a chart at the bottom of this article further analyzing the exact distribution of rates of divorce] 40% of divorces involve children. 39.7% of children born in america are born out of wed-lock. With numbers like these you'd think that books like what to expect... would at least gear themselves to a more neutral ground. WHERE is the book for parents who never planned on having a kid and don't intend on getting married. here are a few Sure there are books about being a single mom or a single dad, but what about the gray, thorny inbetween couple who still happens to have a solid vested interest in the 3rd party (the kid), but for whatever reason the relationship didn't work out? Is this book out there?

Where is What to expect when Murphy's Law crashes down on you?, subtitled: the book for parents that don't like each other anymore. Or something to that effect. Hell, maybe they do like each other, but they were just fuck friends and never wanted to have any sort of lasting relationship together but they're both interested in having this kid but still find themselves having a hard time doing that together. There are hard questions that need to be answered and it would help if an ammicably separated couple could turn to a book and had at least a few answers without having to feel ostracized because wifey is a bit temperamental at month 5 and hubby wants to figure out how to still get her to have sex with him. This is obviously a more trivial issue that married pregnant couples have. Perhaps there are bigger issues at stake, like, what to agree upon when the couple lives hundreds or even thousands of miles apart. Maybe not a book of answers, but some suggestions or helpful tips & advice would be great too.

Without the drudgery, pain & expenses of going to a lawyer, maybe there are some suggestions for a hierarchy of what is more important? Breast-feeding vs. visitation. For instance, if mommy wants to breast feed, but the fact that mom and dad don't live together means that the kid can't spend time with dad without also being forced to hang out with mom, what's more important. Breast-feeding and less dad-time or formula and having that necessary father figure in the picture.

I ask these questions because these things have come up in my parent-parent-child relationship and luckily I have a pretty agreeable woman for the most part that, though we aren't together, tries to make sure that dad stays in the kid's life because we both agree on equal parenting, but find ourselves at odds when it comes to certain subjects. Some things aren't always so clear cut and dry though. Say the two are married, but soon find out that their ideas of parenting vary wildly: One person feels that breast-feeding or even formula feeding shouldn't go on as long as the other “partner” does... what then? When can and should a baby be able to switch to cereal, pureed peas, bananas, etc? This sort of issue might be avoided by a married couple assuming that the pair has known each other well and long enough to know how they would feel about certain child-rearing situations (ideally). A pediatrician or even a simple google search will tell you that a baby can start eating cereal mixed with formula or breast milk around month 4 and solid foods can be introduced around month 6.

I think the point is that there are way too many books on pregnancy assuming that your personal situation is the “ideal” one when the numbers of non-ideal situations are so high. Humans are strange, idiosyncratic and just plain fucked up; there's no way that these books can truly help the masses based on a paradigm that fell to the wayside 50 years ago, yet they continue to sell because books like What to expect... is the standard; In fact, between what to expect... and your pregnancy week by week it's the book most people are given by the obstetrician's office or if you were to take a birthing class. I'm not saying they're bad books or that they're uninformative; they're just biased products in a society that is becoming increasingly less and less biased (or so we hope). it's about gender, sex & race neutral marketing. imagine if you bought a pregnancy book and it automatically assumed you were a 30-year-old white male married to a 30-year-old white female instead of a 20-year-old single male puerto rican or a 40-year-old partnered gay black female... it's a big double u tee eff. obviously demographics play a huge role in why these books continue to get published without bias-editing. perhaps it's because the publishers (workman publishing company & running press book publishers) don't think that minorities read their books, which is a huge sexist, racist, heterosexist blunder on their part.

Age at marriage for those who divorce in America
Age Women Men
Under 20 years old 27.6% 11.7%
20 to 24 years old 36.6% 38.8%
25 to 29 years old 16.4% 22.3%
30 to 34 years old 8.5% 11.6%
35 to 39 years old 5.1% 6.5%

chart & other statistics provided by divorce rate dot org

hot roads

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 18:36:00 +0000

the great break out

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 23:43:00 +0000

bony fingers grasp cold metal bars: pushing, lightly at first, and then harder. fingers grasp firmly and the push becomes a heart's full force, until the metal slowly gives way. the bars begin to bend and eventually buckle before breaking altogether. repercussions will surely arise. there must be consequence for the start of the break down. the great break out. the heart knows now though, that it is free. like plato's cave dweller's it can't go back into the dark. the light far too bright to ever be able to readjust to the poorly lit room.

the bars then are torn from their fixations in old, worn, white brick, covered in a decorative dark wood. bars of light shine through the dust, illuminating the splinters scattered about the stone floor.

someone will come and ask about the mess. they will want to know where this room's occupant went. they will wonder how so much metal and mortar couldn't contain just one mortal soul. they will wonder whether a heart really does have the strength to break through anything. and the answer will be yes; provided it has the right fuel. it will burn hot and bright like magnesium and in a flash the fuel will be consumed. transmogrified. the cracks in the wall from what once was the window's edge to the floor will agree with this conclusion.

a room occupied once by stale air and somber, sallow emotion now filled with breathable heat and a freshness of spirit, as a house that takes it's first breaths of rain and leaves and spring air in march. when the silence of snow gives way to a din of birds and bending trees. then is the moment that you know you can bend to the world and it will not be at odds with itself; even if just for one fleeting moment, you know you can rely on things not falling completely apart, as they are wont to do.

the room sips in streams of light which creep and edge their way along the musty, ruffled, grey brick like a mouthwash, turning the dusty walls a golden yellow that is forgetting of it's true colour.

lungs fill. the air vacillates between cool and burning hot, like peppered ice. somewhere, hands are connected to feet and they run. and lungs heave, filling with hot peppery fuel before they're depleted and released in a fiery fume into the cool night sky only to start the process over again. soon, star will stare down on the scene knowingly as if they've been waiting for this moment for a billion billion years... and they have. the sky will set and the sun will leave the blue city moon to it's work, haunting alleyways with orange-glowing halogen streetlights shining between rat-infested garbage cans and unaffordable garages.

broken

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 02:47:00 +0000

filtering out the negative

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 05:08:00 +0000

i see films. they lie to us all of the time. these love stories are all a farce. as far as i can tell i haven't seen anything that resembles any of the idealistic bullshit that a love story has to say. the true films are of failed love or of love, worn and wasted and alack of passion. repomen: M5 neural network. his life becomes the idealistic, repetitive dream to sustain his brain function. why?

a friend once told me, "man, my old lady... she went berzerk for i don't know what and i found myself searching youtube with the sound off at 3 in the morning watching sharktopus. it was hilarious."
that aside, i said to him, "you're lucky, despite all the hullabaloo at least you're still together. for yourselves. for the kid."
"look man," he tells me, "you have no idea how many friend's i've seen knock up their old ladies and watch them turn a complete fucking 180°"

i didn't have to know. i've seen it. felt it. first hand. capricorns are supposed to be succeeders. the ones who don't accept failure and do well with money and finances. i don't know about the finance portion, but, i don't take failure well. despite all of my efforts and the puzzle piece engraved into my forearm to show my dedication to finishing the puzzle, i failed here. or did i?

maybe it's societal. or parental. or circumstantial. whatever it is, my mother said it best: you deserve to be loved; you're not a bad person.

and so long as i'm truly not a bad person (or anyone for that matter) then the axiom is true. a friend in highschool once told me that he never got worked up over a girl who didn't give a shit about him. if she didn't care, there're a million other girls (billions in fact) that might care. if one solitary person wasn't right... well i guess at least we have billions of other chances to find the right one, yeah?

what it comes down to is this: people go through life altering experiences and whether they or you like it or not: they change. for better or worse, we must deal with these changes and adapt. that is the greatest (and essential) human clause. that is what has allowed us so many millenia on this precious and heart-wrenching globe. we survive. we can and must adapt. if we cannot then we if not as a species, as individuals must evolve to accomodate our higher selves.

becoming stoic is near impossible. having a strictly positive attitude is about the same. if we strive, however, for portions of these values, then maybe we can find ourselves in a place that allows us our own piece of happiness and THEN! the puzzle is complete... or at least as nearly as we can get.

ultimately, i believe to filter out the negative, we must strive to find exactly what it is that burns the fuel at the core of our beings and never replaces it with anything with which to revitalize us again. if we find ourselves in the presence of liars and thieves, users and grifters, we must learn to see them for who they are and avoid being drawn in to the drama. this is where our stoicism comes into play. that and a thick skin. the things that are taken though, tend not to be of monetary value. if it were, then we would be getting off cheaply. the things that cost us the most are our values: trust, compassion, heart.

as young adults we are prone to leaving ourselves open to foolish blunders. the skin has a tendency to grow so thick, though, that we cannot feel at a point when someone is being genuine and this leaves us with a sense of loneliness and abandonment: we are jaded and damaged.

film fest

noreply@blogger.com (apox) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 21:15:00 +0000

so chicago's film fest is upon us. i, however, had my own film fest this last thursday and paid my $10 entry to sneak around the theatre for six and a half hours watching the town, wall street: money never sleeps & buried, not necessarily in that order.

working backwords: buried is to phonebooth as the last exorcism was to the blair witch project. why bother making a film which requires the audience to be well informed (or at least moderately aware) of a previous film, though neither one is related to the other. bastards sons? isn't the point to create something NEW & interesting?? buried was certainly better than phonebooth, but at the same token, a new take on an old story, even when done right is, at the end of the day, still the same story. i don't care that the island is a better take on plato's allegory. i know the story. do i need to see ewan mcgreggor and scarlet johannsen running around in white costumes to really enjoy or get anything out of it? do i need to answer that question for you (save the fans of those two gorgeous actors) in fact, most people who've seen the movie probably missed the point entirely and may in fact not even know who plato is. this is after all, america.

buried: should have stayed as such, as idea and never made it to the living screen.

the town: another bank robbery. need i say more? 2 great actors (which you can imdb or google yourself and view their filmographies) spent wasting their time in something that will never touch a long list of bank robbery films (do i need to specify, dog day afternoon, heat, and the first 2 minutes of dark knight, OR point break!? YES! point break from 19 years ago is a better story that the [thumbs down] town)

lastly, is wall street. i've never seen the original and so am forced to give an opinion for OR against a film without having seen it's pairing, especially because this IS a sequel. it was, in effect, good. i don't care for the hoodwink music videoesque fills that essentially have no purpose whatsoever other than to take up time to round out the 133! minutes, but that's why it's called artistic license.